Not even GNOME itself could ignore the GNOME 3 criticism for much longer. "As part of the planning for the DropOrFixFallbackMode feature, we've decided that we will compile a list of supported gnome-shell extensions. This will be a small list, focused on just bringing back some central 'classic' UX elements: classic alt tab, task bar, min/max buttons, main menu. To ensure that these extensions keep working, we will release them as a tarball, just like any other module."

They still just don't get it. While they are caving to some pressure, they aren't really changing the core problem. That problem is that the desktop is MINE, not theirs. If I want to change the way it looks, I should be able to. I don't give a crap about their branding, or their identity, or anything else they think. They can ship whatever they want, but if I can't make it usable, I am gonna go with something else. Plus, who the heck wants to code against an arbitrarily moving target?

And it's reasoning such as yours, that I believe Gnome3 seems to be such a failure. Of course the developers do the hard labor in an open source project. But without the userbase, there wouldn't be donations, nor distros and corporations that would invest in paid developers to keep the project going.

Then why don't you clone the git repository and start coding your self?

We, the users and devs, did. They are called Mate and Cinnamon. This is exactly the attitude that got Gnome into their current mess, with users and devs fleeing and forking. When a single set of decisions spawns two completely separate projects, you obviously aren't listening to your users.

While I feel Hiev is being a total douche about this, he's partially right. If you don't like Gnome anymore, don't use it. Xfce is nearly at the feature and stability level Gnome 2 was a few years ago, and even KDE is becoming tolerable enough to use daily (my own opinion there, not a statement of fact).

The Gnome team seems hell bent on doing the same thing the Arch team is: Pissing off all the regular users until there's only the core development team left. Then it's their private playground to do with as they wish, the public be damned.

Maybe that's why Arch has one of the most complete and functional Gnome 3 installations out there. Perhaps the two teams can get together and circle-jerk each other into irrelevance while the rest of us move on to better desktops and distros.